Craftsy Block of the Month (BOM)

By Judy -
In January I saw an email from Craftsy offering a free online class doing a Block of the Month by Amy Gibson. All my friends know me as always finding great bargains at the grocery store and clearance racks, so to find something to teach me how to quilt that was going to be free was right up my alley. I bought a Layer Cake at Joann's called Sunny with beautiful grays, blacks and my favorite yellow in them. I figured I didn't want to spend a small fortune on nice fabric since I didn't know how well I'd be able to piece this together and how many times I'd be ripping it out. Then I didn't know if I'd end up with a 12.5" square piece of fabric in the end. Well I'm thanking my lucky stars that I didn't spend that small fortune because I had to do each of the blocks twice - Ugh! Here are my two first tries at the Asterisk Block and the Wonky Pound Sign Block.



The Asterisk Block consisted of repeatedly cutting the fabric and sewing in strips of the gray. Talk about being scared to be cutting up such pretty fabric this way and that. I thought it turned out great except for the fact that I didn't like that the slash on the bottom left and going to the top right was showing its seams. That really bothered me that such a beautiful block didn't match perfectly. The Wonky Pound Sign Block also consisted of cutting up fabric but not as extreme. Actually this block was much easier but it didn't square up to the 12.5" that it was supposed to do. Doing some investigating I found I wasn't sewing with a 1/4" seam allowance. I assumed that when you have a quilting foot it was automatic - wrong! Back to the drawing board I went with the blocks.



After going slower and following the directions exactly the block turned out exactly the same way with the seams showing. After posting some questions on the forum I heard that everyone had this same issue and it was supposed to be that way. (I don't agree that it should and I'm on a mission to find a tutorial that doesn't have that ugly seam showing on one of the cross strips.) With the correct 1/4" seam allowance my Wonky Pound Sign measured correctly - Yeah Me!

The February BOM is out and I'm excited to jump right in. I'm off to my sewing domain in the basement.

Have a Great Day!

Comments

  1. Celtic ThistleFebruary 2, 2012 at 8:22 AM

    I have signed up for the same BOM (I like a bargain too!) but haven't attempted January's block yet, so interested to hear off the problem with the seam showing. Thanks for the heads up! Love your fabric choices for the quilt, looking forward to seeing your next blocks.

    ReplyDelete

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